Maxtor promises ‘OneTouch’ back up

Maxtor today makes the bold claim that it has revolutionised the external hard drive - thanks to a magic button.

OK, we added the magic bit, but the gist is that Maxtor has added a "OneTouch" button on its new Personal Storage 5000 family of external hard drives. Press it for instant copying and/or back up. Sounds like a neat feature, especially for the sort of screwdriver-shy consumers who buy external hard drives. But it needs a review to see how this spans out in practice.

The Maxtor 5000 family has three members, the 250GB, 120GB and 80GB. The smallest drive, the 5000LE, supports USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 and is positioned squarely at the consumer market, carrying an SRP of $199.95 in the US.

Its bigger brothers support Firewire and USB 2.0 and are hot-swappable and stackable, and Maxtor is gunning for business sales as well as consumers with deep wallets. The suggested retail price for the 5000XT (250GB) is $399.95 and the 5000DV (120GB) is $299.95. ®